Centrifugal Death
by Dr. Bross
Summary: Kalina Graves has just survived the Talon Gun with two other soldiers from her unit. But they're all about to find out that there are much worse things in the valley... like Tabitha Caulder.
1. Chapter 1: Tabitha Caulder

- Advance Wars: Days of Ruin

-- Centrifugal Death

-- Chapter 1: Tabitha Caulder

I crawled out from under the collapsed wall that had nearly crushed me. My ears were ringing, and I could feel blood trickling down my neck. I was on my knees as I reached up to find my ear had been cut, but luckily it was not serious. My helmet was gone and I could not find my assault rifle. My dusty blue uniform and long coat had come out untouched more or less, and I had not been hit or impaled by debris. I felt my pounding head. The bun I put my brown hair in was still intact, and I couldn't feel any gashes or bleeding. I thought I was fine as I tried to stand up, but ended up wobbling around until falling back down to my knees. My body ached, and I remembered what had happened. My unit and I… we had been fired on by… something. I had never seen anything like it. The sky lit up with a flash followed by a sound that I could think of only one thing: buzz saw. It was exactly like a spinning blade in my father's saw mill, only accompanied with the sound of a million guns going off at once. The block we were defending was completely destroyed. Anything that had not been leveled by the strange weapon was covered in holes. It looked like the cheese that had been shot several times. Rubes called it Swiss cheese.

When my ears stopped ringing, there was a short silence before I picked up on the gunfire and explosions in the distance. I stood up and was relieved to find I still had my pistol. I didn't know how useful it was going to be; before the strange weapon fired on us our unit was cornered. From across the street, from windows, from alleyways- everywhere I looked men and women in black took aim at us. We were close enough so that I could make out the emblem of an owl in flight on the shoulders of their uniforms. Then they retreated… and the flash came. Now there was nothing left of the block. Every building around us had collapsed at once with no crater to suggest a bombing and no fire to suggest an artillery barrage. I started to climb over the pile of bricks and twisted metal beams to find anyone from my unit. There had to be other survivors like me, and I tried not to imagine them trapped or flattened under rubble. The first thing that jumped out at me was the RPG that belonged to our unit leader, Empric. We weren't a mechanized division, but Empric had salvaged an RPG long ago and no one was foolish enough to ask him to drop it. It was sticking out of a mess of debris.

"Empric? Empric!" I called out.

I flipped what used to be piece of roof and immediately regretted it.

There was so little of Empric left that I let everything fall back to the ground. I didn't know how to describe it. He… he was everywhere. I froze after spinning away and started to feel nauseous. Luckily my attention caught on to someone groaning in pain and I stumbled down another pile of bricks to find Raleigh slumped up against what had to be the most resistant brick wall ever made by mankind. The noise had shattered his glasses and he was bleeding horribly.

"Kalina," Raleigh coughed, seeing me approach. "I saw it… I saw it move…"

I kneeled down next to him. I had no medical training… but even if I did I knew all the bandages and band aids in the world weren't going to help Raleigh now.

"The cylinder part… it began to spin… it used centrifugal force… to open up like an umbrella. It was like…"

His head bobbed as he tried to find the right words. I couldn't think of anything to say.

"Like… a carousel... at a carnival…"

Then his head bobbed off for the last time. I was about to move on, but I couldn't as much as turn my head before I heard guns cocking.

"Drop your weapon or you will be shot!" Someone behind me ordered.

Very slowly I dropped my pistol to the ground. Now the only thing I had to defend myself was a knife hidden up my sleeve. It was different from my combat knife, which I had lost months ago.

"Hands up, turn around!"

I turned around to find the soldiers we had been fighting earlier. They stood on top of rubble and crouched behind anything that would shield them as they trained their weapons on me. I remained still as one of them retrieved my pistol then put the barrel of their gun to my back. We started to move up over the rubble and away from it. Soon I was being paraded down the street along with Jones and Marki, two others from my unit. Marki limped along, looking more or less healthy. He still had his helmet, and the way his black hair crept out from under it… he always looked a little crazy even though he was anything but. As for Jones, he was a large man, blessed with the genes as my mother would say. He wore a heavy coat several sizes too small and he always looked like he was going to pop out of it. We only exchanged tired glances as we were moved down the street. It was not far until we reached the parking lot of a derelict gas station. There were tanks parked along the road, and an APC in the gas station lot. Standing in front of the APC was someone… strange…

"Sir, we've located all the survivors we could find."

Amongst all the men and women in black uniforms, including us in our blue Lazurian uniforms, there was a girl. An older girl if I was going to be generous. She couldn't have been more than a couple years out of her teens. Her fancy white dress was surreal for the city we had spent an entire day fighting in. She wore heeled shoes, which was color coordinated with her lavender gloves and the ribbons keeping her hair in two pigtails. And her hair… her hair was an unusual white color. She was too young for hair that color. It only got worse when she turned around. The way she looked at us… we must have been hideous. Her expression was locked in a snarl and her yellow eyes did nothing to help that. I didn't know what to say, the soldiers with their guns on us had addressed her as a superior officer but she was younger than all of us. I looked to Jones and Marki with a sick feeling growing in my stomach.

"Do you know who I am?" The girl asked, hands on her hips.

"No." Marki answered.

His honesty was rewarded with a football kick to the crotch. It was not the kind of football Rubes play either. The girl hit him so hard he fell to his knees and let his face hit the ground. He couldn't catch himself because he was cradling his wounded manhood. Then he rolled onto his side and looked like he was trying to resist curling up into the fetal position. My mouth dropped slightly as I noticed he was crying. This girl hit him so hard he was crying! I started to think about my knife. The girl was pacing back and forth, she was almost within arms distance. If she was just a little closer…

"My name is Tabitha Caulder. If you have brains in any of your skulls you'll never forget it."

Her tone was ferocious. Even when my mother and father were at their angriest, they never sounded this menacing.

"I am the daughter of the esteemed Dr. Caulder, head of Intelligent Defense Systems."

"IDS?" Jones said like a reflex action.

Tabitha drew a small semi-automatic pistol and shot Jones in the foot without so much as aiming. He let out a howl of pain and fell to the ground. Then he started to whimper, trying desperately not to make any more noise for fear of being shot again. Tabitha moved closer and stood over him and for a moment, I thought she was going to stomp him into the ground.

"Did I say you could speak, rat!?"

I made my move. I reached up my sleeve and pulled my knife out, ready to gut her from neck to waist. But I didn't even get to swing. Tabitha was… blindingly fast. She pistol whipped me in the face with enough force to knock me back several steps. And I would have, except she then grabbed my arm with the knife and threw me in a self-defense move I had only seen on bad Rubinelle TV shows. I hit the ground so hard that my entire body went limp, a tingling feeling rushed from my neck down and I thought I heard something snap. For all I knew at that moment, I could have been paralyzed, my arm could have been broken and for the longest time I did not move. I probably could have looked dead to Jones or Marki if they were watching. And then almost as suddenly as it happened, the feeling rushed back into my body and I yelled in pain, coughing and rolling onto my side. For the trouble I must have put Tabitha through, she started to stomp her spiny heel onto my face. The motion reminded me of my grandmother trying to kill cockroaches in the kitchen.

"Stupid and weak. That's what you are. Rats."

Tabitha… she was a monster. And to prove that she was beyond the level of human, she took my knife and broke it into two with her bare hands. I felt the two pieces hit me as she tossed them. Now the three of us were on the ground, moaning and flopping around like dying fish on land. I hated her. There was no way I could express my anger, and I could do nothing.

"My father and I, we control the world whether it has ended or not. Would you like to know why? Because the world is filled with stupid and weak people like yourselves. When the meteors fell, they did a good job of killing many of you off, but there are still FAR too many left crawling around. I am here to fix that."

I tried to stand up, even after the beating I received. I wanted to spite her. She kicked me in the stomach with the kind of force that made Marki cry. I almost cried myself, but I was too angry at… too many things.

"Did I say you could stand up? If you have any ounce of common sense, you'll stay on the ground!"

"Bitch." I muttered, too low for anyone to hear. If she did hear me, I probably would have been killed right there.

"I'm surprised any of you survived the Talon Gun, but at the same time I'm glad I can provide father with at least some feedback. So how was it?"

The way she said 'so how was it' was filled with all the sarcasm and hate you could possibly fit into spoken word. Sometimes when my father was angry he would use a tamer version of it, but either way, it was not something you answered.

"Silence? That's answer enough. You don't know what to say do you?"

I thought about trying to get back up, but the pain my stomach kept me from doing so. All I could do was lie on my side and stare angrily at Tabitha, who had not lost her snarl for a second since she began talking to us.

"Let me be the one to tell you, that all of you rats? Consider yourselves test subjects! You're too stupid and weak to control your own lives. And if you cross me? Well, I'll crush you. I'll crush you like the flies you are."

One of her soldiers came over and handed her an RPG. She put it on her shoulder and looked through the scope. It could have been one of ours; it might have even been Empric's they salvaged from the place where we had been hit with… what Tabitha called the Talon Gun. At least she had given me a name to the strange device that had almost wiped our entire unit out.

"So, how many of you are on the other side of the mountain, rats? How many vermin am I going to have to exterminate? How many flies am I going to have to crush? How many of the stupid and weak are going to get what they so richly deserve?"

We said nothing. I don't know about Marki and Jones, but I was still in pain. And I hated her, more than I've hated anyone since the meteors had fallen. Commander Tasha had almost been driven mad with rage after the meteors fell, and while I've always followed her no matter what, I was beginning to understand what that would be like. It gives you purpose, focus. You know who the enemy is, you know what you have to do to stop them, and every moment they spend without punishment… it only makes you angrier. Everything about Tabitha was horrible, not once had her expression changed from her disgusted look as if we offended her. We continued to say nothing, which made her take a few steps back. She started to take aim at us on the ground with the RPG, moving from each one of us in turn. Firing an RPG at that distance was suicidal, but if there was anyone going to convince me that they were reckless enough, Tabitha had crossed that line long ago.

"No… please!"

I turned to see Jones holding one of his hands up as if they would save him from a rocket propelled grenade. He broke. He told her our numbers, gave her a rough estimate. Jones was always bad with numbers… but amazingly Tabitha had scared him into being more accurate than I had ever seen him before.

"I'm sorry," Jones stuttered. "I'm sorry."

I could have yelled at him, and then I realized how scared I was too. I remembered when I found Empric. I would do anything to escape that fate. Tabitha raised her head away from the scope of the RPG. She had a new expression. Now she was clearly under whelmed.

"That's it? That's all there is? Are you lying to me, rat!?"

"No! No!" Jones cried.

"Pitiful! That's insulting! This is hardly worth my time! But what father says must be done."

If I was not in so much pain, I would have jumped up and attacked her, even after how easily she dealt with me before. I looked to Marki and Jones and only got angrier. Tabitha acted like taking other people's lives was a terribly boring chore forced on her like doing the dishes or taking out the trash. Like a spoiled child. But at the same time, there was obviously something not right about her. She was stronger than any one of us, with inhuman reflexes. I didn't know if her arrogance was just her behavior, or the fact she let these talents go to her head. I knew getting rid of her wasn't a job the three of us could do on our own.

"Sir, what should we do with the three Lazurians?" One of Tabitha's soldiers gestured to us on the ground.

"I haven't decided yet."

Tabitha still had the RPG. She tapped her fingers along the barrel and actually smiled. I don't know why I was surprised, but her smile didn't make her look happy, it only made her look crueler. And now, she was smiling at us…

- Next Chapter: The Bunker Man


	2. Chapter 2: The Bunker Man

- Advance Wars: Days of Ruin

-- Centrifugal Death

-- Chapter 2: The Bunker Man

Maybe Tabitha was going to blow us up with an RPG. Maybe she was going to shoot us all with her pistol. Maybe she was waiting for suggestions, and if that was the case, we didn't have to wait long.

"Copters!" One soldier yelled.

"What!? That's a terrible idea, who said that!?" Tabitha spun around ready to kill someone.

"No sir! Enemy copters! Inbound!"

I was on my back; I didn't have to try hard to see the blue copters flying towards us. Immediately they began to fire on the IDS soldiers in the gas station parking lot. All of them scrambled for cover, but Tabitha… Tabitha just stood where she was, looking up at the copters as merely inconveniences to her day. She fired the RPG nearly shooting one of the copters down.

"Get rid of them!" She yelled.

Suddenly, Marki, Jones and I… we were forgotten. Marki tapped my shoulder and pointed toward an alleyway behind the derelict gas station. With Jones, we began to crawl. The IDS soldiers were shooting at the copters and the copters were taking aim at them. A missile blew part of the gas station up, nearly killing us in the process. We continued to crawl. Every now and then, I would look back to see Tabitha still standing out in the open, seemingly invincible. If I had a gun, I would have shot at her, because I think I would have rather died than let her get away unharmed. But I couldn't forget about Marki and Jones, the only survivors from my unit. We had to get away, before our own copters accidentally killed us in the chaos. Somehow, we made it to the alleyway and hid behind a dumpster.

"Anyone hit!?" Marki yelled.

"No." I said.

"My foot!" Jones cried.

"Other than that!"

"No… but my foot!"

Jones held his foot. The blood was dripping out of his boot. The bullet looked like it was through and through… but I couldn't be sure.

"Can you walk!?" I yelled over the rotors and bullets flying.

"Are you crazy, Kalina? My foot!" Jones yelled back.

"Limp then! We have to get out of here!" Marki said.

We acted as crutches for Jones, holding his arms over our shoulders and started to move as quickly as we could. Coming out on the other side of the alley was a nearby forest. All we had to do was cross the street and jump a guardrail and we'd be in the wilderness, but before we tried there was a man in a top hat peeking out from behind one of the trees.

"Hey!" He tried to whisper but it only came out harsh. "What are you guys doing out here? You're in the perimeter!"

"What?" Marki said for all of us.

The man recoiled at the sound of all the gunfire going on just off behind us. He wore a dirty black coat, or a coat that was so dirty that it looked black. The rest of the time he spent hiding behind his tree with his eyes to the sky. In the moment we had no time whether to think to trust him. He looked nothing like the IDS soldiers we had escaped and maybe that was enough. We crossed the street, helped Jones over the barrier and entered the forest following after the man in the top hat. He crouched down as if every gunshot was a bullet aimed at him and wound a complicated path through the trees. Where we ended up was a bunker, a well hidden bunker with concrete painted like camouflage and covered by branches. We went down a set of stairs to a tunnel and reached a hatch that the man opened up and frantically pointed for us to get inside. We found a well lit concrete tunnel and collapsed to the floor. The man closed the hatch and turned to us, shaking his head.

"Dude, you guys are crazy. Hanging out in the perimeter? Crazy! On a scale of one to ten, I'd put you guys… uh… what comes after nineteen?"

"Twenty." Marki said without thinking.

"Yeah! Twenty! Holy crap you guys are twenties! Three twenties! That's like… sixty! You guys are crazy!"

Marki stood up, punched the man in the face, and pushed him up against the wall.

"Who the hell are you!?"

"Dan! My name is Dan! God that hurt! Right in my face, dude!"

His eyes began to water, and before long he started to cry. He did the best he could to hide it.

"Oh god that hurt! Right in the face!"

"Hey, Marki, go easy on him." I said.

"Dude," Dan sniffed. "I got a place right down the hall where we can crash. I was trying to take you there before you hit me… in the face."

Marki let go. Dan led us down the hall to an open hatch. A little sign above it read "T. Gun Monitoring Station East". Whatever it was, Dan had turned it into his living space. One wall of the room was nothing but computer consoles and monitors and papers spread out everywhere. I could see where Dan had taken up reading the papers because there was a light focused on a part of the terminal. On the opposite wall was a table, some chairs, a mattress made of coats and anything else that passed for soft. There were left over empty cans everywhere. Dan had no concept of housekeeping. But I had not seen a rat since the meteors fell. And there were cases that desperate survivors left out trash to attract roaches so they could capture and eat them.

"Make yourselves at home, dude."

We helped Jones over to the makeshift bed and sat him down carefully. I took off his boot while Marki forced Dan to find something we could use to stop the bleeding. It ended up being a towel that wasn't close to being clean, but it was all we had. Marki went to work while I collapsed into a chair. When he was done doing the best he could for Jones's foot he joined me. The weight of everything probably hit us in that room. At least I knew that I felt it.

"Are you okay?" I asked him.

"Are you?"

"No… No I'm not. Empric… when I found him… He was everywhere, Marki. Everywhere."

"Everywhere?" Marki didn't understand.

"A million pieces. Everywhere."

"Direct hit right?" Dan said, still trying to stop crying from when Marki hit him in the face.

I took the first close look I had since we ran into this man. He had a five o' clock shadow, and even in this bunker his eyes still moved around constantly. Under his coat was a black jumpsuit and if the world had not ended he would have fit in as any serial killer or madman if he tried to walk the streets. Maybe he was, we knew nothing about him. But he wasn't armed and with his vocabulary… I had a hard time picturing him as threatening. There was a chance that after Tabitha, anyone who wasn't her would have been a saint to me.

"What do you mean… direct hit?" Marki asked.

"The Talon Gun. You guys were in the perimeter."

"How do you know that? How could you possibly know that?" I said, getting out of my seat.

Tabitha told us it was the Talon Gun that had wiped out our unit. And now this man in a top hat said it. Marki also stood up. Dan held his hands up in front of his face.

"Dude, I think I found the instruction manual or something! Don't hit me!"

He started to gather papers scattered all over the room and threw them onto the table for us to look at. Slowly Marki and I sat back down and began to look them over. They were classified files. At the top of every page was a mounted knight with a lance, our symbol for the Lazurian Army, and the picture of an owl in flight, which stood for Intelligent Defense Systems. Every page was about the Talon Gun. Schematics, instructions, maximum effective range, operating procedures… everything about it.

"Look at this thing, Kalina…"

Marki didn't have to say anything more. The insides of the Talon Gun reminded me of an ant farm my mother got me when I was little. Tunnels on tunnels, side rooms, generators, ammo storage areas… and I could have kept going. There was no price tag that could have described the amount of money the Lazurian Government invested in this weapon. The facility alone was probably sad enough, but when it came to the actual weapon. It probably fired gold bullets with silver jackets and diamond tips. But at the same time, we had seen it work. However much they spent building it… they seemed to have made it successful.

"Where did you find this?" I said, in shock.

"Well dude… just exploring. You look around, you find stuff. I think someone tried to clean this place out when the meteors came. I found these papers all over. It's some good reading. It has lots of good pictures and maps. I love maps."

I couldn't believe this idiot had gotten his hands on national secrets not even Commander Gage or Tasha had probably seen. Maybe not even General Forsythe knew about the Talon Gun or this valley. But here this man was, in his top hat, reading up on top secret weapons because he was bored. I suddenly felt tired, psychically and emotionally exhausted. I could only rub my face and felt the dried blood Tabitha had drawn with her spiked heel.

"There's also these monitors," Dan pointed out. "Whenever the Talon Gun fires, there are lots of alarms and buzzing sounds. Then a map comes up and a little space on the grid flashes. The whole room shakes, there are lots of loud noises and it always happens when I'm trying to get to sleep."

"Is that how you knew to find us?"

"Dude, yeah. The Talon Gun only fires at things in range. It's got two modes, grid fire, which you guys got hit with and the other is all range firing. But that sounds really dangerous and will probably blow it up. It's only a prototype after all."

"Did you read this whole damn report!?" I yelled waving the papers in his face.

"Dude… it's not like I have anything else to do."

We were rendered silent by Dan's answers.

"Can I ask you guys a question?" He said after a time.

"What, Dan?"

"Dude, what's up with the cool braids? You got one," He said pointing to me. "But then he's got one."

"It's regulation for all Lazurian soldiers to have a braid, regardless of gender." I told him.

"What… are you a Rube?" Marki asked.

"No dude… I used to live in this valley before the government moved everyone out. Then the meteors fell and… I came back. Lots of things changed. There was a huge metal bump in the earth. Didn't know what it was until I found the papers. I didn't have to worry about it until those other dudes turned it on. And now it's blowing stuff up and killing people. Serious business," Dan then remembered what he was originally trying to answer. "I never heard anything about a braid for the army though."

I wanted to tell Marki that Dan was an idiot who probably didn't know lots of things about the country he lived in. But Lazuria was gone, the government was gone, and there were no more national secrets. Plus, Dan had done his best to help us when he could have ran and left us out in the open to be blown away again by the Talon Gun.

"Dan." I said.

"Yeah dude?"

"Thank you for bringing us here."

"Dude, no problem. Soon as I saw you, I knew. I knew you guys got hit. You guys should probably get some sleep now that I think about it."

Dan's suggestion was practically a command as my eyes got heavy and I set my head down the table. I don't know what Marki did after that, but I was fast asleep. I only hoped I wouldn't dream. I was afraid they would be filled with the Talon Gun and more afraid that they would be filled with Tabitha Caulder…

- Next Chapter: Sunday Drive


	3. Chapter 3: Sunday Drive

- Advance Wars: Days of Ruin

-- Centrifugal Death

-- Chapter 3: Sunday Drive

We woke up to a Talon Gun firing. Alarms sounded, buzzers rang, and the monitors flashed just as Dan had described it. A ridiculous amount of statistics was displayed on one monitor. It showed heat output, the amount of ammunition that the weapon shot, the wind speed it was compensating for, and many other stats I couldn't understand. On another monitor it was a map of the valley in a grid. Five areas in total flashed where the weapon fired upon, and some had altitude readings. We made the horrible realization that the Talon Gun could hit aerial targets just as well as it could hit ground targets. Not even our air force was safe from it. A clock showed that it only took the Talon Gun twenty five seconds to open up, fire and close to prepare for the next time it was activated.

"Dan, there has to be something we can do from here!" Marki yelled.

"Dude, it's a monitoring station! It's all stats!"

The sense of urgency did it for me. We could see everything we ever wanted to know about the operation of the Talon Gun on these monitors, but we couldn't stop it from firing. All we could do was watch it tear into our forces. Somehow, I pictured Tabitha somewhere laughing or smiling that cruel smile of hers. I had to sit down.

"Dan…" Jones said, sitting up. "I have to ask. What's with that stupid top hat?"

Dan reached up to adjust his hat and shrugged.

"Well dude… just exploring. You look around, you find stuff. I always wanted a hat."

"What about guns?" I asked

Marki looked at me and raised his eyebrow.

"Kalina, what are you planning?"

"Destroying that thing. Eliminating the missile unit protecting it, like our original orders."

"Are you kidding? How about retreating?" Jones pointed to his foot. "I can't do anything now. It's just the two of you, three if you want to count this idiot."

"Don't call Dan an idiot; show him a bit more appreciation for showing us this bunker." I said.

"Are you even listening to him Kalina? He says 'dude' every other word! He's a Rube if I ever heard one!"

"At least he didn't snap like a twig in the face of an RPG!" I yelled.

Jones got quiet and his expression changed like I had stabbed him. He lowered his head and bit his lip.

"I've seen more than a few friends blown up. I thought… I thought she was going to do it. I really did." His voice shook.

"I know… I'm sorry."

"Well, whatever we're going to do. We're going to need some way to defend ourselves." Marki said. "Dan, you said you lived here. Are there any gun stores? Any place where we might find weapons?"

Dan was quiet as he started to think. He leaned up against one of the consoles and thought for a long time.

"Dude yeah… but uh… it's like on the other side of the town. It'd be like a day trip if you walk it. You'd probably run into those other dudes for sure."

I was about to tell him that it didn't matter. Jones could stay in the bunker and we could go out. We had to do something. IDS built this weapon, they probably knew where these monitoring stations were and we would be found eventually. But then Dan lit up, he started to get really excited.

"Dude! I almost forgot! You want to see it? You want to see the squealer?"

The squealer, as Dan put it, was a muscle car parked in a rotting shack not too far from the bunker. It used to have a lime green paint job, but most of that paint had peeled. The engine that was sticking out of its hood had started to rust. Some of the windows were cracked, and the trunk was latched by a piece of rope since it was bent out of shape and wouldn't close all the way. But the most important detail was that it still started as Dan got behind the wheel and turned the ignition key. The car coughed and sputtered and smoke shot out of the tail pipe. But it ran. The car actually ran. Dan bopped his head to an imaginary tune and put his hands on the wheel as if he was driving it. Marki, Jones and I looked on in shock, while Dan smiled the biggest smile he could.

"Cool huh?"

"Where did you… how did… oh, nevermind." I stumbled over my words.

"Can we use this to drive through the town?" Marki asked.

"Sure dude. As long as you bring it back in one piece."

"Dan, Intelligent Defense Systems: the enemy we're fighting? They have tanks, artillery, rockets, copters; fighter jets… the chances you get this car back without bullet holes or without it being blown apart. It's slim." Jones told him.

Dan lost his smile; he looked across the dashboard and pumped the brakes a few times. He reminded me of my father, trying to make an important decision between what he wanted to do and what my mother wanted to do.

"Dude… can you at least try to bring it back?"

"We'll try." I said.

"Okay," He got out of the car. "Wait, do you guys even know how to get to the gun place?"

It was a good point. The best course was to drive out and drive back as quickly as we could. The longer we spent aimlessly navigating the streets, the more likely we were going to run into IDS or an armored division. We were going to have to take Dan with us. Jones rolled his eyes and sighed. The four of us climbed into the car. Marki got behind the wheel, paused and then got out.

"It's manual." He cursed.

"Dude, you can't drive stick?" Dan asked.

"Shut up Dan."

"I can drive then." I said.

Marki and I switched places. He and Jones sat in the back while Dan sat in the passenger seat to give directions.

"Yay, Kalina. Adding a woman's touch to our Sunday drive." Jones clapped.

"I'm going to blame that sarcasm on the loss of blood and not hit you in the face." I said flatly.

"You're very kind."

We started out of the shack and followed a short dirt road to the streets of the town. I spent a whole block getting used to the rattling sound and the brake pedal that would stick every now and then. This car had survived the meteors… and that same time it hadn't. Any minute I expected a door to fall off or the engine to die. What we didn't have to worry about was fuel. The tank was nearly full. Dan had either done well finding fuel, or he had done well rationing it out and walking most places instead of driving everywhere. Maybe he just went to the shack and stared at the car, not wanting to take it out for fear of losing it to raiders or other desperate survivors. I glanced at the look on his face and I couldn't tell if this was the first time he had taken it out of the shack or not.

"Dude, turn here."

Everyone who wasn't driving kept their eyes out for IDS or anything that looked useful. Some of the town looked okay, and some of it was devastated. The Talon Gun must have fired several times in this area, because we found more than one block totally leveled in the same manner that happened to us. And wherever we were, we could see it on the horizon. The metal hump in the earth, as Dan put it, looming over everything. I remember using binoculars to look at it when we came in over the mountains. Now it was closer than ever, and more intimidating. I turned my attention back to the road as Dan took us through alleyways and side streets back behind buildings.

"I figure you guys want to stay as hidden as possible right?" Dan said.

"Better than getting shot." Jones coughed.

"Okay, take this next turn here… and assuming it wasn't blown up…"

I pulled the car out onto a long street of a block that wasn't leveled. There were a few cars parked along the road but they had been smashed by something. Our muscle car with the peeling lime green paint job might as well have had a spotlight on it. I never felt more exposed in my life. But we drove to a store with shattered windows to see it was just as Dan promised. A gun store.

"Dan, stay in the car with Jones. Marki and I will go check." I said.

We went to check inside. Through the shattered windows was darkened room with shelves and racks. It took awhile for our eyes to adjust, but when they did, we saw it was empty. There was hardly a single bullet left in the store. Marki went over the counter to check the shelves back there. I had a feeling it would have turned out this way, but it was better than doing nothing.

"Damn." I cursed.

"There's nothing left."

The horn started to blare, and we turned to see Dan frantically pressing the steering wheel and waving to us. We heard it, and when we exited the store we saw Medium Tanks rolling down the street. Soldiers ran along side the tanks, heading right for us.

"Don't forget the guns!" Jones yelled.

"There aren't any left! It's picked clean!" I said.

Marki and I piled into the car and I slammed the pedal. The car held together even though it sounded like it was going to explode and we started to race down the street. The IDS tanks and soldiers opened fire with their guns and I heard the back windshield shatter. Jones and Marki ducked low in their seats and Dan assumed a position reserved for aircraft crash landings.

"They're going to be radioing for something that can catch us." Jones realized.

"Aw man. Dude! The back windshield aw man…" Dan cried.

"If we don't get out of here there's going to be a lot more to worry about than this piece of junk car!"

"Drive, Kalina!" Marki yelled.

"What do you think I am doing!?" I screamed back.

Luckily for us the car was able to keep a good speed in the condition it was in. When we were on straight roads the town flew past. And at the same time I had no idea where I was going. Dan wasn't giving directions, but we didn't have time to stop moving and figure it out. I turned down a narrow road that looked more at home for deliveries and dropping people off. There was hardly enough space for two cars to pass, and at the end of the road a tank rolled to block our way. Everyone shouted reverse, but I plowed forward and managed to fit the car through the tank and the building. Both sides of the car scraped as we went past, and predictably bullets soon followed. I turned onto what I thought was a road, only to discover it was a destroyed walkway for an outdoor mall. We drove through tables and overturned trash cans. Dan winced at every impact and shook his head. Finally I found the road again and spun the car off to the left. It was a big road now, four lanes, two going in each direction with a median filled with dead trees in-between them. In the opposite lane, we watched a trio of bike units' drive by.

"Bikes! They're turning around!" Marki yelled.

I used the rearview mirror to watch the bike units jump the median and start to come after us. The guns they had mounted on their sidecars fired immediately and I turned down another street to get us out of their line of sight.

"Are you telling me you found nothing in that store?" Jones said. "Something to shoot back with would be good right now!"

"There was nothing, so shut up Jones!" Marki cried.

We hit a bad bump in the road that was impossible to tell from the speed we were going and the car went airborne. A hill shortly after it only made us fly further. Hitting the ground again almost tossed everyone into a new seat. I only managed to stay in mine by holding onto the wheel. The bike units took the same bump and the same hill, but only two managed to keep control while the third flipped over and started to spin along end over end.

"Go make love to a Rube!" Jones shouted out of his shattered window as we pulled away.

"Dude, quick! Left turn! Right here! Now!"

Dan directed me to a series of brutal turns that I almost flipped the car going around. They went back and forth, around thick trees that looked like they could stop tanks. Next thing I knew, we were driving through a park.

"Is this car suited for off road?" Marki yelled at Dan.

"Sure dude! I mean… why not?"

We bounced up and down over the uneven landscape. If my grandmother was the car she would have thrown up a long time ago. I was getting there until I found a sidewalk that was smooth enough to keep the car bucking like an angry bull. The bike units found the uncut grass tough going with their sidecars and slowed down drastically.

"Dude! Tree! Freakin' tree! DUDE!"

I fit the car between two trees close together and broke the side mirrors right off. But it led to a gate and we were back on the road again, out of the park.

"Dan, where are we!?" I cried. "Get us back to the bunker!"

"Straight!"

As soon as Dan said straight, two recon jeeps pulled out and drove right toward us. They formed a rolling blockade and their mounted gunners fired on us. The windshield was blown apart as we all got down. I turned the only way I could and charged into a parking garage. We started up a spiral ramp, and the IDS recon jeeps were not far behind.

"Recons! Damn!" Marki shouted.

"Do you think they'll try to bring us to Tabitha? Do you think she'll humor us with her speech again?" Jones asked.

"I'd rather die than see her again!" I shouted.

There were still plenty of cars parked in the lot. They were all rusting and I bet not a single window was in tact. I weaved in and out of them when I could, looking for any ramps leading downwards again.

"Dude, we need to get out of here before they can block the exits!"

I didn't need to be told that. One of the recon jeeps had already broken off and gone somewhere else, while the other one chased us around. Suppose it was already blocking the exit. I don't think this car could crash into one of them and keep going; the engine looked unstable enough running normally. I decided to leave the same way we came in and went down the wrong way. Who else could be coming? The world had ended; there was no one else that could hit us head on. So I went down the same spiral we drove up to get in this situation. The recon jeep almost couldn't follow turning the wrong way and back again, but its driver was able to stay on us. Then, on the way down the spiral, the two bike units I thought we lost were headed right into us.

"Oh dude no!"

I gripped the wheel and stared in surprise. The bike crew wore goggles, but I could see their mouths drop open when they saw our peeling lime green car heading for them. They had nowhere to go, and unceremoniously we smashed right into them. The first bike was bounced back and forth between our car and the concrete barrier until the scraps passed by us. The second bike unit tried to skid to a stop and when we hit them they flipped onto the roof of our car. The recon jeep drove over the rest of the pieces and we exited back out onto the road Dan had told me to go straight on.

"Dude! You're crazy! On a scale from one to ten-"

"Shut up Dan!" We all yelled at him.

It was not long until we reached the forest where the bunker was, only with a recon unit on our tail. I wasn't sure what to do. We couldn't stop. We had nothing to defend ourselves, and we couldn't lead them back to the bunker. Somehow we would have to get out of the car at the shack and run in different directions. Then I thought of Jones, who couldn't run to save his life. I looked back to Marki, and he seemed to be thinking the same thing I was. I just kept driving. The shack was fast approaching. And then, we heard a tire pop. Was it ours? Dan looked like all the color from his face was going to fall out the way he looked at me. Any second now, we were going to lose control and go right into a tree. Then we realized it was the recon jeep behind us that lost a tire. One of the fragments of bike had ruined their front left and soon they skid right into a tree.

None of us could turn away. The jeep bounced off the tree and then started to flip end over end along the road, still keeping up with us. Then it landed on its roof and came to a smoldering stop. I stopped the car and we just stared at the wreck. The recon crew didn't survive, that was obvious. They had been thrown from the jeep and were frozen in the position they hit the ground with.

"Do you think they have any guns?" Jones wondered aloud.

"One way to find out." Marki said.

- Next Chapter: Wartanking


	4. Chapter 4: Wartanking

- Advance Wars: Days of Ruin

-- Centrifugal Death

-- Chapter 4: Wartanking

Dan's car died and wouldn't start again, but we managed to salvage quite a few weapons from the crashed IDS recon. It was enough to give us a chance to do whatever we were planning to do. I wanted to hit the IDS missile unit. I didn't care how suicidal it was. Jones wanted to retreat, and Marki was still trying to decide. While we thought about that, we put everything we could carry from the recon crash and piled it up on the table in the bunker. Judging by their equipment, IDS were no gang of raiders. We recovered four assault rifles, which were the newer model of the rifle Lazuria adopted for its military. All the wood that had been on the rifle I lost was replaced with black, lightweight plastic. Pistols similar to the one Tabitha used to shoot Jones in the foot, ammunition, grenades, radios, and even helmets. But I was afraid to wear their helmets. They were distinct enough that all I could imagine was getting shot by our own men, thinking I was an IDS soldier. Instead I gave one to Dan who used it as a bowl.

"Dude, quite a haul. It just sucks that the squealer died."

"That stupid car…" Jones sighed.

A beeping started to sound on the wall of monitors. It wasn't a sound we had heard before, and the Talon Gun was still warming up for another shot. When we found the screen making the noise, all of us gathered around it.

"What is that?" Jones said, pointing toward the flashing icon.

"Dude, don't touch the screen." Dan said, pushing Jones's finger away.

"Shut up, Dan!"

"Both of you, quiet!" I said.

"It's not the Talon Gun firing…" Marki thought aloud. "So what does it mean with that grid highlighted?"

"Maybe they're using the Talon Gun's sensors to find you guys hiding in the valley. Looks like a bunch of you guys are heading towards the town nearby." Dan suggested.

The three of us looked to Dan. I think we all forgot that he had completely read through the secret files detailing the operation of the Talon Gun.

"So, they can't shoot it more than once a day… but it can still track targets?"

"That means IDS knows exactly where they are." Jones muttered.

"We need to get out there and warn which ever division that is that they're being tracked." I said. "It's not far; they're practically in into our zone."

"Let's go." Marki agreed. "Maybe we can get them to evacuate Jones."

Marki and I started to leave, and then I turned to Dan.

"Stay here with Jones."

"You got it, dude."

"No! Don't leave me here with him!" Jones said, stumbling over a chair and nearly falling down. "I'll crawl as fast as I can!"

Marki and I quickly made our way out of the forest and started searching for the ones the Talon Gun was tracking. They were probably trying to reach the town and take cover before nightfall, and before the Talon Gun readied to fire again. We did not have to wait long before a mechanized division started slowly making its way down the streets. Marki signaled them. They followed protocol making sure we were friendly and then signaled for us to come over. We ended meeting the in a hollowed out building standing in front of a roundabout with a fountain in the middle of it. Strangely the fountain statue of a man riding a horse was still intact. As for the mechanized division, they were from Brenner's Wolves. They were a bunch of Rubes.

"Who's in charge?" I asked.

"I am, William Heckler. Who are you two?"

William Heckler had blond hair coming out from under his helmet, and if his face wasn't so dirty he could have been on the cover of a propaganda poster.

"We were part of the infantry division-"

"Holy hell," Heckler cut us off. "Are you part of the unit that got hit by the Talon Gun? We thought you'd been wiped out."

"No, three of us escaped. Listen, the Talon Gun is using it's sensors to track your unit." Marki told him.

Heckler didn't seem all that surprised; he just rubbed his chin and sighed.

"Yeah, HQ figured getting anywhere near this thing was trouble. But it's a risk we have to take. We're here to make another attempt at striking the missile unit guarding the Talon Gun. Bombers can't get close to it without getting shot out of the sky."

"Yes… it has to be destroyed." I agreed quietly.

"You said there was another one of you?" Heckler asked.

"He's resting in a safe place nearby."

"You three should probably retreat back behind the mountains before the Talon Gun is ready to fire again. I can't imagine-"

Heckler was cut off mid sentence by rumbling. The entire area began to shake and loose pieces of the building started to fall around us. The other Rube soldiers gripped their weapons and some of them readied their RPGs. I knew what it was. We all knew what was coming. First came the ground shaking, next was the hideously loud of metal scraping up against metal. A dust cloud rose up into the air in the distance, and was coming right to us.

"Wartank!" One of the Rubes shouted.

"Shit! I didn't think they'd respond so quickly!" Heckler yelled. "Everyone take defensive positions!"

Marki and I moved to a window of the hollowed out building and looked across the fountain square. A building tumbled down as a big black Wartank bulldozed it. This was only the second time I had ever seen a Wartank. The first time was when Admiral Greyfield chased us across the ice fields. These tanks were large like none other. At least two stories tall, with five cannons on the front and even more cannons on the back. It was almost impossible to flank in this respect, since all it had to do was turn slightly to bear down on you. I heard that tank rounds from anything smaller than a Medium bounced right off their armor. The only good way to deal with them was from the air or with Anti-Tank units. But the chances of a mechanized division going up against it… was not good. Usually it came down to outlasting it. Wartanks chewed through fuel, and their ammunition storage was not large. It was about lasting until they were forced to retreat and rearm.

"HQ. HQ. We have a Wartank. Requesting air support, immediately." One of the Rube soldiers with a radio shouted.

The Wartank continued to roll closer until crashing into the fountain and crushing it under its massive treads. Then it stopped, and a hatch on top of it opened up. Marki and I… we couldn't believe who got out. It was not an IDS soldier… it was Tabitha Caulder. She was wearing riding goggles and gripped the Wartank's mounted gun with a cruel smile. The same cruel smile she had used thinking about how she wanted to kill us.

"It's that bitch! It's her!" I cried.

"This is not good." Marki said.

"I'm going to step on every- last- one of you!" Tabitha screamed cocking the Wartank's mounted gun.

Her voice was loud enough on its own so that we could hear her clearly over everything. I could hear her clearly over the Wartank, the fighting going on in the distance, the shouting of the Rubes and probably the sound of my own thoughts.

"Run, little rats!"

She started to fire and the bullets tore through the building's walls easily. It was like we were hiding behind paper. Some Rubes were hit and Marki and I moved from our space near the window in time to avoid getting shot ourselves. Tabitha raked everything in front of her with the gun she controlled. When she started back we dashed across the street along with Heckler and some of his men. The five front guns on the Wartank fired, and obliterated the building we had used for cover in a huge fireball. My ears started to ring, but I could still hear Tabitha yelling, rambling on about killing every last one of us. When she wasn't cursing our existence she was screaming or I could hardly believe it, laughing. But it was never done to the point where she sounded crazy. It always sounded like she was in the thick of doing a job she loved to do. The only time she shut up was when the Rubes took aim at her Wartank and fired their rockets. They were on target, but the tank didn't look affected.

Tabitha immediately shot in any spot an RPG was fired. The Wartank began to turn in our direction, probably setting up to level more of our hiding spots with its huge cannons. I found a corner and started to take aim and shoot at her. Marki pulled me to safety as Tabitha spun and shot in my general direction, peppering everything with bullets from the mounted gun.

"Is there some girl on that thing!?" Heckler realized.

"She's their commander! Kill her!" I yelled.

"Kalina! Control yourself! It's a Wartank!" Marki shouted at me.

"She can't get away this time. Not this time!"

"It's a Wartank!" He shouted at me again.

"Sir, HQ is sending support. Copters, sir!" One Rube announced.

"Everyone hold on till then!" Heckler shouted.

We moved around the fountain square, staying near structures and anything that was strong enough stop the bullets Tabitha was firing at us. The Wartank had its sights on another building and fired its main gun again, blowing several buildings apart in the process. Before I might not have believed a Wartank wasting its ammunition to clear out hiding spaces… but this was a Wartank with Tabitha in it. It was Tabitha's Wartank. She'd do anything to see us all dead. Marki and I took shots at her, but it was only a quick pull of the trigger before she retaliated.

"Shit, Fencer! Are we even scratching that thing!?" Heckler asked one of his men.

"Doesn't look like it, sir!" One Rube with a gasmask yelled back.

In the middle of everything I thought of my mother's saying- we were the young children poking the beehive with a stick.

"Here come the copters!"

We looked up to see a pair of helicopters flying over the area. They took a pass before turning toward the Wartank and fired a barrage of missiles. It was a direct hit, and they quickly fired again. It looked like a stream of missiles from our position on the ground, and the Wartank took all of it. I couldn't see Tabitha, she probably ducked down into the turret and closed the hatch. When the copters stopped firing, I saw her pop back up, grab hold of her gun and start to shoot at the copters. She fired enough rounds at one to bring it down in a fiery blaze. The other copter retreated, and the Wartank didn't even slow down.

"I… I don't think that's a normal Wartank!" One Rube realized.

"She's going to kill us all if we stay here." Marki said to me.

"No…" I was so frustrated I felt tears running down my cheeks. "We're just going to let her ride off again? How can she escape twice without getting shot in all of this?"

"She'll make a mistake… but not here, not now." He assured me.

"We're getting cut apart by that thing. Everyone, fall back! Fall back!" Heckler shouted to his men.

Again, Marki and I were forgotten in the panic. The Rubes went their way, and we started back towards the bunker. Tabitha continued to shoot at all of us as the Wartank started to move. It rolled forward and started to bulldoze more buildings as if they weren't there. Fortunately for us, the collapsing buildings kicked up more than enough dust to cover tanks trying to escape. So much dust that we almost didn't realize we reached the forest until we started running into trees. The ground continued to shake as Tabitha's Wartank pulverized the area in search of people to kill. Even as we returned the bunker the ground still continued to shake. Dan let us into his room, and where we fell we rested to catch our breaths.

"Is that a Wartank up there?" Jones asked wide eyed.

I put my head between my legs and continued to cry tears of frustration.

"It's everything right in the world being run over by Tabitha Caulder." I told him.

- Next Chapter: Bullet Carousel


	5. Chapter 5: Bullet Carousel

- Advance Wars: Days of Ruin

-- Centrifugal Death

-- Chapter 5: Bullet Carousel

I woke up to Marki lightly shaking me. He was very quiet and looked over both his shoulders before speaking.

"We have a problem." He told me.

Jones was still asleep but I didn't see Dan anywhere.

"Is it the Talon Gun? Has it gone off yet?" I asked.

"No, it's not that. I was checking our weapons… we're missing a pistol."

"Did we lose one when Tabitha was in the Wartank?"

"No. I think… I think Dan took one when we were sleeping."

"Maybe he's concerned for his safety?"

"This is Dan with a gun." Marki said again.

"Let's ask him about it then. Where is he?"

Marki motioned toward the hatch and we went outside. We went past a couple trees until we reached a creek. Dan was sitting on a log facing us with a gun in his hand. With his other hand, he was scratching his neck. He didn't seem upset or stressed or anything that would suggest we were in trouble. It was just odd to see him with a gun after everything we went through.

"Dan." I greeted.

"Hey Kalina." He said. "Marki."

"Is that one of the pistols we recovered from the recon crash?" Marki asked.

"Yup."

Dan didn't say anything more. We looked at each other.

"What are you doing with it?"

"It's getting harder to hide it, and you guys got guns now. Maybe it wouldn't be so bad… but you're soldiers. You're trained to kill. Dude, you could probably kill me without a gun."

"Why would we want to kill you, Dan?" Marki asked slowly.

Dan stood up and cocked the weapon causing my throat to tighten up. He then took off his top hat and showed us why exactly he wore it. Dan had a cluster of flowers growing out of his head. I looked on in shock while Marki dropped his mouth open. Dan was infected with Creeper. But he was middle age… it only affected children. He should not have had it. I couldn't understand and I was amazed by how long he had managed to keep it from us.

"Man, dude, if you could only see your faces. You look exactly like lots of people who used to live in this area until they started going crazy. They started turning on each other, shooting each other, locking people in basements and blaming everyone for everything. On a scale of one to ten, they were like… uh… uh… thirty."

I couldn't take my eyes off Dan with the flowers growing out of his head. Blue and yellow flowers, they looked different than the pictures I had seen of the Creeper growing out of children. How did he contract it?

"Did the Creeper spread to adults in this area?" Marki asked carefully.

"Creeper? Is that what you call it? But yeah dude, no one was safe. But you couldn't tell who had it until they had flowers popping out of them. It drove everyone crazy."

"Doesn't it hurt?" I asked still staring at the flowers on his head.

"It itches… it doesn't really hurt though."

"Not yet." Marki muttered to me.

Dan pointed the pistol at us. We had not brought weapons. I didn't think anything like this would have happened. And Dan was… Dan. How could he possibly pose a threat? But here he was, holding a gun to us.

"Dude… I really like you guys. You're soldiers n' stuff… and you got hit pretty bad but you were still pretty nice."

"What are you going to do Dan?"

"Well… I gotta kill you guys before you kill me. That's how it works. Anyone who saw me like this… dude, they came after me like I was some… zombie. Like I didn't have feelings anymore… it was crazy."

"Dan, listen carefully." I started with my hands held up. "There is a doctor. His name is Dr. Morris. He can help you. He's been working on the Creeper for some time. If he only knew what happened to you… you could save a lot of lives."

"Dude, you never met Doctor Steyr. He only chopped people up; he even tried to plant someone in the ground while they were still alive. Not to mention… that's like the oldest trick in the book. Sorry."

Dan put his top hat back on. I was relieved that I didn't have to see the plants growing out of his head anymore. But now that I knew they were there, I could see a few roots mixed in with his hair coming out from under the hat. I was still amazed that he was infected with Creeper. What did that mean? Did that mean we were infected as well? We spent days hiding out in the same bunker with him. It didn't seem like anything else was possible. That was in the back of my mind, even as Dan gripped with pistol with both of his hands and motioned for us to walk.

"Let's go dude."

"Dan, you don't have to shoot us. We don't want to kill you."

"C'mon dude. I know you guys think I'm dumb, but please. You guys weren't around when the whole town was like you guys. Everyone wanted to help everyone. They never mentioned it had to do with a bullet to the face though. What a way to go, dude. You think someone has your back and then they shoot you in the face."

We tried to reason with Dan some more as he walked us through the woods, but I only got angrier and angrier. He didn't trust us. He wouldn't listen to anything we said. Was it Creeper? Or was it just paranoia? Maybe the roots were growing through his brain and he couldn't think straight. I got to a point where I couldn't think of Dan without wanting to break his neck. We had survived the Talon Gun, two attempts by Tabitha Caulder and the end of the world just to be killed by some man who wore a top hat and sputtered 'dude' every other word! It couldn't end like this!

"Where are we going?" Marki demanded.

"I want to show you one more thing, dude."

Dan led us to another camouflaged bunker. It was a fair walk from the other one, but when we went down it didn't lead to some monitoring room. It led to a tunnel. A long almost endless tunnel that was poorly lit with colored lines painted on the ground. We were told where to go as Dan walked behind us, with the gun ready to go off at a moments notice. I expected him to shoot at any time.

"See these tunnels dude? I think workers and science guys used it to get around the valley to work on the Talon Gun."

"How far do these tunnels go?" Marki asked.

"Maybe all the way to the Talon Gun, but I never really explored them. We aren't going too much further anyway."

He was right about that. We walked until we reached a ladder that went straight up to a hatch. Dan motioned us to climb and open the hatch. I got out of the tunnel to see we were in the park we had driven through with the rotting muscle car. Marki climbed out, but Dan didn't join us. He only climbed the ladder far enough to grab the hatch and prepared to pull it close.

"I don't have the heart to shoot you dudes… so I'll let the Talon Gun do it. I do want to shoot Jones though. He's a real asshole."

"What!? You're leaving us to the Talon Gun!? You bastard!" I screamed lunging for him.

Dan quickly shut the hatch and we tried to open it only that there weren't any latches or handles or anything to get a grip on from our side. We must have clawed at it for several minutes before realizing that it was hopeless. We were in the middle of the park in the morning with the Talon Gun probably minutes from going off. It always fired in the morning, only it hadn't fired yet… so it must have been getting close. I started to remember Raleigh, and more vividly what happened to Empric. I felt sick. I didn't want to end up like them.

"Marki, are you sure that the Talon Gun had not fired yet?"

"Yes, I'm sure Kalina. We probably don't have much time…"

"We have to get out of here, run!"

The park was a plate for us to be killed by that thing. A building had saved me only because it had almost smothered me. Here it was only a few trees and wide plains of dying grass. In the car we had cut through it quickly enough, but now it seemed to stretch on forever. We didn't waste any time finding a gate, we just found the first fence we could and climbed over it. Sirens began to sound all around us when we landed on the other side. They were like air raid sirens only we knew they weren't warning of a bombing. Any minute now the Talon Gun would open fire and obliterate both of us along with anything else that was near us.

"The sirens!" I gasped. We had no time left.

"It's getting ready to fire!" Marki cursed.

Where was there to hide? Any building near us could just as soon as bury us. I stopped running in the middle of the road and just turned to look at the Talon Gun on the horizon. The big cylinder in the middle of it started to rise into the sky. It started to spin. It spun fast enough until the barrels lining the cylinder stuck out in all directions. It spun just like Raleigh said, like some carousel at a carnival. Only this carousel shot a hailstorm of bullets. Yes, we were going to ride the bullet carousel. We were going to be everywhere.

"Come on, Kalina! Keep moving!"

I started to run again, but I didn't know where. We just dashed down the street, trying to outrun something that a bike or recon couldn't outrun.

"Look! There!" I shouted.

It was a sunken stairway leading to the basement of a building that sold appliances. We almost rolled down the stone steps to get below the street level. The sound of the Talon Gun firing followed us soon after. My ears hurt just like the first time it fired. I threw my hands over them and put my head down as far as I could. Marki did the same. It wasn't enough. Whatever the Talon Gun fired- bullets, lasers, cannonballs, solid pieces of steel- it roared above us tearing the building to pieces. Small chunks of bricks and dirt fell on us… it could have been snow as fast as it came. And whatever else rushed above us sounded like a train crashing to sound of a buzz saw. Soon the door we hid near fell over and hit me, but I kept down. All of this couldn't have lasted more than a minute, maybe twenty or thirty seconds at most. It came and gone just like that. I opened my eyes to see Marki yelling, but I couldn't hear him. I couldn't hear anything either. We were both yelling at the top of our lungs and couldn't hear ourselves or each other.

"Marki! Marki!" I finally heard myself scream.

"Kalina!? Are you alright!?"

I checked myself. I was covered with dirt and dust from head to toe, but I had come out alive. Marki had come out alive. We both came out alive. We survived the Talon Gun again. Our surrounding area looked just like the last time. Every building in the block was reduced to pieces and fragments. Everything that wasn't pieces and fragments had gaping holes in it. We crawled out of the sunken stairway and looked off in every direction.

"I'm going to kill Dan." I told Marki.

"Dan is going to kill Jones!" Marki remembered.

We moved as quickly as we could back to the forest. The tunnels were much quicker with a straight shot as we had to navigate buildings and streets and fences. At this rate Jones would be dead… but even still, Dan was going to pay for this- infected with Creeper or not. We ended up back at the bunker to find Jones crawling for his life. He was using grass, roots, anything that would keep him sliding forward with frantic panic on his face. Following after him at a slow walk was Dan looking on in strange amusement.

"Dude… where do you think you're going?"

"Get away from me Creeperface!" Jones shouted.

Dan heard us coming and turned. The surprise froze him in place and it was more than a little easy for me to grab his gun arm and twist it until he dropped the weapon. And after that I broke his nose. I hit him hard enough until I heard the satisfying snap. He screamed like girl and dropped to his knees. Then, Marki and I… we must have beaten him within an inch of his life. I remember kicking off his stupid top hat and stomping him in the face.

"You… idiot! What were you thinking!" I shouted. "Have those roots grown into your brain!?"

"Ouch! Dude! Oh god! Someone- ouch! Oh god!" Dan cried, curling up into a ball and desperately trying to defend himself.

He thought we were going to kill him, and now we were. A self fulfilling prophecy if understood my father correctly whenever he said it about people talking about food shortages and then running out to buy everything.

"You stupid… weak… son of a bitch! Leave us to the Talon Gun? You make me sick!"

Marki stopped hitting Dan and backed away from me. I didn't even notice for awhile. I just kept kicking Dan wherever it looked like it hurt the most. Then I looked up and saw the expression on his face.

"What?" I asked.

"You… sound like Tabitha." He said quietly.

My throat seized up when I remembered what I had said. I tripped over Dan's leg and rolled to the ground and then sat up. I was shaking. No… anyone but her. Why… but Dan made me so angry… He tried to kill us! And not just kill us… but leave us to the Talon Gun. I saw what it did to Raleigh and Empric.

"Oh god dude… my face… my… my entire body. It hurts."

"Shut up!" I yelled at him. "You… you left us to the Talon Gun! Do you understand that?"

"It's a machine that wastes things… it was going to be quick… I read all the reports! I could practically run it!"

"Kill him!" Jones yelled. "He tried to shoot me in the face! I'm just lucky he's a horrible shot!"

Marki picked up the pistol and made sure it was loaded and pointed it at Dan. I got up and stood between them.

"No… don't kill him. I have a better idea." I turned to Dan. "We're going to use those tunnels you showed us. We're going to take you to the Talon Gun control room, and you're going to make it explode."

"What?" Dan stuttered. "Look what you did to me…"

"We weren't going to kill you! But we aren't going to let you get away with this. If you want to keep us from killing you now… you're going to destroy the Talon Gun. That's the price of your life."

Dan lay on the ground speechless. He was bleeding all over, and some of the flowers growing out of his head had been smashed and smeared. His eyes jumped quickly from me to the gun Marki had in his hand and he slowly shook his head.

"Dude… but I don't want to go to the Talon Gun…"

"You lost all say when you tried to kill us, you stupid bastard!" Jones yelled. "We're the good guys!"

"But you don't got the flowers… whoever doesn't have flowers kills those who do…" Dan whimpered.

I don't know what happened to Dan when the Creeper spread through his town. Maybe it made him crazy. He just didn't look it and he still thought clearly… if only to make incredibly stupid choices. But none of that mattered. We were going to take him to the Talon Gun, we were going to find that control room, and Dan was going to set it to all range firing mode. If he was right, it would overload and we'd never have to see it again…

Next Chapter: The White and Green Line


	6. Chapter 6: The White and Green Line

- Advance Wars: Days of Ruin

-- Centrifugal Death

-- Chapter 6: The White and Green Line

The next night we took turns watching Dan while sleeping. The next morning, we took all the weapons we could reasonably carry, our rifles, pistols, grenades and went to the second bunker Dan showed us when he tried to kill Marki and I. Then we started walking. Jones did not join us. Instead he stayed in the monitoring station with a radio we acquired and was going to let us know the progress of the Talon Gun getting ready to fire. We had to time this plan well. Dan had to switch it to the mode he said would overload it before it was going to fire so none of the IDS soldiers could change it back. It occurred to me that this was probably a suicide mission. Who knew how many soldiers they had stationed inside the massive gun? It was probably enough to take two soldiers and one civilian. But there was another chance that they did not know about the tunnels and we might be able to sneak in and hold the control room long enough for Dan to redeem himself.

"Dude… this is a bad idea…" Dan whined.

"Let's just think of it this way. Normally all of us would be dead by now. The Talon Gun would have killed us, and the Creeper is going to eventually kill you. This way, we're all get killed clustered together." I said.

"That's really morbid dude."

"Shut up and keep going." Marki shoved him.

"It's a prototype weapon; a million things could go wrong. We only need one thing to go wrong." I told him.

We were following the white and green line painted along the ground. Letters painted next to it read T. Gun Center. If this did not lead us to the gun directly, we would be close enough. All we had to do was keep walking… forever. Sometimes we would feel vibrations or hear explosions above us. But none in the tunnels. No one probably knew about these tunnels except Dan and us. It was starting to collapse anyway in some sections, who would bother to take the chance?

"Whoa dude… this is getting heavy."

The concrete tunnels started to slowly transition to steel corridors with pipes running along the ceilings and an interior that could have been part of a battleship. The white and green line still ran along the ground only now it was talking about T. Gun Lower Levels instead of the center area.

"Is this it? Are we under it?"

"I'm thinking more like… in it." Dan said.

"That's right, you and your love for maps. Where do you think we are?"

Dan reached into his coat and pulled out some papers we told him to bring. He flipped through until he found the schematics of the gun and squinted through the poorly lit tunnels at the small lines.

"Elevators… this way." He pointed.

I took a moment to radio Jones.

"Jones, this is Kalina. We've reached the Talon Gun. If everything goes right… you should probably be very far away."

"On my foot? Are you crazy?"

"I'm serious Jones. That little concrete bunker may not save you. Try and locate James Heckler and the other Rubes. They still may be in the area."

He was quiet for a time.

"It's been an honor to know you both." He said.

"Likewise, Kalina out."

We came across double elevators with buttons only pointing up. They were shiny steel… they looked so new and well taken care of.

"I don't see any cameras." I thought aloud.

"Dude, if this thing had a security system, we probably already walked through it. How much of this do you think actually works? I'm surprised they even got the juice to run this thing, much less keep the lights on."

"Fair enough." Marki shrugged.

I pressed the elevator button and we backed off and found the nearest corner. It opened up and no one was inside. We piled into the elevator and Dan looked over the choices on the console.

"We got… uh… UG… where we are. Must mean 'Underground'. We got G… that must mean ground. Then there's… M. Middle? And… C. C?"

"C is for control." I said.

"That's not how I learned my ABCs."

"Shut up Dan, just press it."

"Wait, this huge thing only has four floors? Are you serious?" Marki asked.

"Half of this place is the gun itself. And even then, the two floors ring around the cylinder that lifts up- you know-"

"We've seen it." I told Dan with my finger on his chest. "Just hit the damn button."

The elevator was slow, and it was a stressful ride to the top. Marki and I made sure our rifles were ready to fire and held them tightly. When the doors slid open we were greeted with an area that looked exactly like the floor we had gotten on the elevator. Only that the white and green line was replaced with a white and red line. The letters painted next to it read "T. Gun C. Control". The cramped hallways were quiet. We didn't even hear footsteps.

"This isn't good dude. They got no one up here?"

"They probably have everyone near the front entrance." Marki suggested. "They probably didn't expect anyone to get this far."

"Do you even care?" Dan asked me.

It must have been the expression on my face.

"If you met the girl in charge… you wouldn't think it was difficult for her to overlook things. She's too arrogant for her own good. I'm not surprised."

We moved through the hallway slowly. Dan led the way, still referring to his papers he found. There were several closed hatches along the way. They looked like they could be for maintenance, or maybe it was all those rooms I saw on the schematics. Either way, the white and red line didn't lead to any of them so we kept going. Finally we found what we were looking for. The hallway took a sharp turn, and around the corner were two IDS soldiers standing guard in front of heavy looking double doors. A glass window on both sides of the double doors showed IDS soldier that looked like the ones that had accompanied Tabitha when we first met her. They worked quickly at a wall of huge computer screens. Three of them typed away at keyboards while the other paced the room with guns drawn.

"This is it." I said turning back to Marki and Dan.

"Remember; try not to shoot anything important."

Marki and I walked out from around the corner and took our shots at the two soldiers standing guard and killed them before they even saw us. Marki then turned and aimed through the window and fired at the IDS Agents inside… only to find that the windows were bulletproof. Every single one of them went to turn their guns on us. I kicked open one of the heavy doors so hard I hurt my leg, but it opened and we were able to start shooting inside the control room. Dan didn't move from the corner and got down hearing the gunshots go off. We would lean out and shoot at the IDS Agents while they had nothing to hide behind. A couple of rolling chairs, but everything else was mounted on the walls. Computer towers, monitors hanging from the ceiling… they had nothing. Before we could get them all, one of them hit a button on the row of consoles and caused the lights to start flashing red. I killed that one and the three of us ran inside. Dan stopped in the center of the room gagging at all the blood and threw up. Marki and I yelled at him while forcing the double doors shut. They had a lot of latches and switches on them… but I think we managed to lock it.

"Okay Dan. Do it!" I yelled at him.

"Oh god dude… look at them." Dan pointed towards the dead IDS Agents.

"Dan!"

"I'm going, I'm going. Oh man… You got blood on the keys dude!"

He started typing regardless of his whining while we looked through the bulletproof windows. Any minute now, I could feel it. There were IDS troops running to the room prepared to kill any intruders. I looked to Dan working busily at the consoles. On the biggest screen in the room, it displayed a profile of the Talon Gun. My mouth dropped open as it started asking for codes. Dan didn't react though; he simply pulled out more papers and spilled them across the room.

"Dan?"

"I'm working on it dude! These are long freakin' codes!"

Shouting made me turn back to the windows and Marki backed away. IDS soldiers showed up like I feared… but even worse they were with Tabitha Caulder. She looked like an animal at the zoo behind the bulletproof glass with the outraged expression she had on now. Immediately she grabbed a gun from one of her own men and emptied the magazine on the window. We ducked down and Dan even stopped working as the glass stopped every round. She came over to my window, which wasn't obscured by bullets and stared. I wasn't sure if she remembered us from the speech she gave us but she was beyond angry either way.

"I don't know how you got in there. But you're never going to leave." She hissed at us.

"Dan," I shouted. "Get back to work!"

"Dude… we're going to die… aren't we?"

"Move!"

Dan hesitantly went back to the computer and started to type. He started making mistakes, cussing every now and then getting rejections from the computer. Some of the IDS soldiers outside the room left with Tabitha, while others waited around with their guns pointed at us.

"What do you think they're going to do?" I asked Marki.

"Probably come back with explosives."

Marki was not far off. Two soldiers from a mech unit arrived with RPGs and moved to blow the double doors up. We couldn't do anything but watch. There was nowhere to take cover. One IDS soldier fired buckling the doors, and the other fired destroying them completely. The blast knocked both Marki and I back and across the floor. We were dazed long enough to have our guns stripped from us and hit a few times. I found myself looking upwards towards Dan, who was slammed with a rifle butt and torn away from the computers. They lined us up, and now the room was filled with IDS soldiers pointing their guns at us. Tabitha entered with her hands on her hips. I wish I still had my rifle; I would empty the entire gun into her.

"What did you think you could do in here? Did you actually think you could stop the Talon Gun? None of you can. It's going to keep firing until all of you are dead or dying," she turned to Dan. "Especially those who look as stupid as you."

Tabitha's arm wound back like she was going to hit one of us. She turned and smacked Dan across the face knocking his top hat loose. Some of the IDS soldiers gasped and even Tabitha did a double take when they saw the plants growing out of his head. Dan however started to cry from the pain and held his face.

"You… Oh. This is… too good. That means… oh, father will be pleased," She smiled. "It's just a shame that all of you are going to die now instead of slowly wasting away."

"Sir," One of her soldiers spoke up.

"Shut up." Tabitha snapped. "I'm going to hang one of you next to the exhaust vents. You're going to be roasted alive. The other is getting thrown out of the Great Owl without a parachute!"

"Sir," The same soldier spoke up.

"I said shut up!" She wheeled around.

"Sir, it's the Talon Gun!"

We all turned to the screen. Something had finished processing and the Talon Gun was starting to react. One of the IDS soldiers was the keyboard pounding away furiously at the console. He didn't seem to be doing anything, as a map showed up, the grid of the valley where the Talon Gun identified and targeted to fire. Only… every single grid on the monitor was lit up even the sides where the majority of the IDS forces were stationed. Tabitha displayed a new emotion; she looked like she was going to be sick.

"What's happening? Why is it doing that? One of you, answer me!"

"Dan… what did you do?" I asked.

"Dude…" He had gotten good at hiding when he was crying. "I set it on all range firing like you told me to do!"

"Sir… please don't kill me… they set the Talon Gun to fire at everything in its range!"

Tabitha looked at the monitors and then looked to us.

"None of you could be that smart to reprogram the Talon Gun… Who did this? Which one of you reset it? Speak!"

Dan quickly buckled under Tabitha's constant yelling. He was scared out of his mind.

"Dude! I did!" Dan said.

"You!? You're lying to me! You're too stupid to have done it!"

"No dude! I found the instruction manual or something!" He cried, as if honesty was going to save his life.

"Sir, what should we do?"

"While we get my father down here to fix this mess, send an order- let no enemy unit into the Talon Gun's range!"

My heart was pounding. The Talon Gun only fired when it could hit something. Could they really undo Dan's tampering before it overloaded? A beep sounded. Everyone turned to the screen.

"What is that!?" Tabitha demanded.

"Enemy... bombers… in… range…" The IDS soldier stuttered.

It was all the Talon Gun needed to start firing. I watched in anticipation.

"Stop it." Tabitha demanded balling one of her hands into a fist. "Stop it right now."

"But I can't! It's already activated!"

The gages and stats from the monitoring station appeared on one console, except they were going up and over their safety ranges. Slowly everything started to flash red. Alerts started to cover up temperature gages and several areas of the picture of the Talon Gun started to glow orange. Pretty soon the control room was shaking. Deafening alarms began to echo throughout the hallways. Some of Tabitha's IDS soldiers started to run out of the room. I could only smile. Tabitha looked to me, then Marki, and then Dan. Then she shot him in the gut. She probably would have shot us too but one of her soldiers tugged on her arm and they both ran.

"Dan!" I yelled.

"Oh dude… I think… I think she's really mad… I broke… the Talon Gun…"

"Just a little…" Marki said solemnly.

Then he was gone. Maybe the Creeper was further along than he let on. With the coat and the jumpsuit… it was possible his entire body was vines already. But that didn't matter anymore.

"Kalina, we have to go. The Talon Gun is coming apart."

Someone started to talk over an intercom.

"All personnel please evacuate the Talon Gun and the immediate surrounding area. The Talon Gun has gone critical, repeat; the Talon Gun has gone critical."

I didn't expect this part of our plan… that we would actually get a chance to escape… could we make it?

- Next Chapter: Firestorm


	7. Chapter 7: Firestorm

- Advance Wars: Days of Ruin

-- Centrifugal Death

-- Chapter 7: Firestorm

Like many times before, suddenly Marki and I became invisible. Any IDS soldiers we came across in the hallways of the Talon Gun were scrambling around too hastily to even think about stopping us. We ran too, through the hallways filled with flashing light and blazing alarms. The way they reacted… along with the sick look on Tabitha's face… the explosion the Talon Gun was quickly spinning toward was going to be very, very bad. The elevators no longer worked in the emergency situation, but we easily followed panicking IDS soldiers to stairs. All of us raced to the bottom, trampling over each other and leaping over railings to cover as much extra distance as quickly as possible. Maybe it had to do with the fact that our blue uniforms weren't so far from the IDS black uniforms and with the red flashing light, who could tell? We were just a stream of people trying to escape the inevitable explosion. To think that out of everyone, Dan is the one who caused it. The Talon Gun was a prototype weapon; a million things could go wrong. All we needed was Dan.

"Okay, we're outside. What now?" Marki asked.

After we charged through wide garage doors with everyone else we caught in the mass of soldiers trying to find the fastest form of transportation away from the Talon Gun. The heaviest guns of IDS were quickly abandoned. The Wartanks, the Anti-Tanks, the Rockets… were all left idling out in front of the gun.

"Bike!" I pointed.

Some IDS soldiers were fighting over a bike, when Marki and I joined in. Unfortunately for us, as soon as they noticed we were Lazurians they made a temporary truce to try and kill us both. We had to break off from them and run towards another mass of soldiers fighting. This time the prize was a recon jeep. There were far too many so we kept moving. Transport copters bobbed into the crowds to pick up handfuls of people before flying off and getting away from the Talon Gun. If only we could get a copter of some sort, we could surely make it! But they didn't stick around long enough. By the time we ran to them, they had already pulled away and flew off into the distance. Not to forget, they were the enemy's transport copters.

"Look at them all! This is going to be very, very bad!" Marki yelled.

I looked up to see the Talon Gun spinning like it did before it fired. But it didn't fire. It kept spinning and spinning and spinning. It was dizzying. The alarms that usually signaled it going off were now warning alarms. And we were in the middle of it all.

"Kalina look!"

It was another bike, this time fought over by two IDS soldiers who didn't notice us. We quickly got on, with Marki in the driver's seat and me in the sidecar. I could drive stick, but I couldn't stand bikes. Marki revved the bike and we were off, with the two IDS soldiers turning around and suddenly realizing what they had been fighting over was gone. I suppose it might not have occurred to them to escape together. Marki was right. The Talon Gun explosion looked like it was going to be very, very bad.

"Go go go." I yelled.

Marki cut through the crowds of fleeing IDS soldiers and used the sidecar to bump some of them. I held on for dear life as he overtook recons and tanks that were trying to run. From my seat, it seemed like a huge race with military vehicles, only that the prize at the finish line was the chance to see tomorrow. I turned to see fire shooting out of the top of the Talon Gun as it spun. The fire started to vent out of the barrels and explosions went off at the bottom of it. When I looked back I saw we had turned onto a road and weaved in and out of more IDS tanks.

"Which way are they going? It does us no good if we escape into the arms of the enemy!" I yelled.

"The Talon Gun is going to explode… is this the time to be picky? Any direction away from it is a safe direction!"

Then a recon jeep started firing on us when the soldier on the mounted gun noticed we were not wearing IDS uniforms. First I ducked and then I grabbed hold of the gun on the sidecar and fired back. I must have hit the driver because the recon suddenly swerved, ramped up a little hill and crashed onto its side. A tank quickly hit it, first pushing it away and then rolling right over it. A soldier popped out of the tank, probably to see what they had hit and noticed us. He got on the mounted gun. We could do nothing now, a gun on a sidecar could not punch through armor. As the tank gunner aimed in our direction, the tank itself suddenly exploded. Bombs were falling all around us. I looked up to see bombers from our side starting to take runs on the Talon Gun and anything surrounding it. I couldn't help but cheer.

"They probably have no idea what's about to happen!" I told Marki.

"But they're all the way up there, they can drop all the bombs they want and not worry about the Talon Gun exploding on them!"

Then Marki started to try and dodge bombs that were trying to hit the line of IDS units escaping with us. He had to turn off the first road he found which was a dirt path going off through trees. Being in the sidecar going over such uneven ground was as far from a smooth ride as I could imagine. I had to press my feet and back up against parts of the car to keep from getting tossed. When we came out of the trees we stared to speed along a long straight road that would have passed for a highway in this area. It took us all the way to the town where we had driven Dan's peeling lime green muscle car through. We were actually retreating to our side of the valley! I smiled at Marki, and was going to give him a wave or see if he noticed what I did… when a black duster buzzed the straight road we were on. Outside the town we saw it start to circle around.

"It's not really going to…"

It started to fly right at us with its guns blazing. I fired back with the sidecar's gun, even though it was totally ineffective. Marki managed to swerve well since our bike continued to rocket forward without slowing down. We couldn't stop now. We had just passed the town that the Talon Gun had fired repeatedly on. That was still far too close judging by the way the IDS soldiers were fighting. The Talon Gun's explosion was going to be huge going by that alone.

"There's no way to shake a duster!" Marki yelled at me.

"Just keep driving! Commander Tasha sent bombers, they must have escorts."

I could only hope. I don't think the duster was specifically sent to come after us, even though Tabitha was the one person who I might expect it from. The duster started to chase us from behind, but before it could start shooting a missile hit it and blew it out of the sky. A blue fighter jet rocketed past and back up into the clouds. I turned to look at the Talon Gun again. It looked like a wheel of fire. Part of the base had deteriorated enough where it leaned slightly. Then, it exploded.

"Marki-"

First the shockwave came, hitting all the trees near us and almost flipping the bike we rode. If not for the side car, it would have wiped Marki out, definitely. A flash followed. A flash to end all flashes then a roar like I've never heard before and the Talon Gun disappeared into a column of flame. The column of flame started to expand like a storm rolling across the horizon. It was a firestorm. Shooting out of the cloud of fire was pieces and parts of the gun. The barrels spun out as if they were boomerangs that would come right back. I could hear the huge chunks of detonated metal hit the earth with a huge thud. One mangled section of the gun shot right over us as if it was a meteor. That part crashed some miles ahead of us. Even Marki took his eyes off of the road and looked back to see the fire rolling across the land. IDS and Lazuria must have built the gun out of explosives to have such a blast. It was coming so fast now that not even a helicopter could probably outrun it. Smoke, dust and blasted earth started to roll in front of it obscuring where the flame was shooting across the ground. That cloud started to close on us.

"It's coming!" I shouted as loud as I could.

When the cloud finally caught up to us, it was the most miserable heat I've ever felt. Everything disappeared into a whirlwind of dust and smoke. I felt the sidecar I was in lift off the ground and spin. I couldn't tell if I was facing up or down or flying through the air. I could no longer see Marki, who was right across from me. Then everything came to a sudden stop and I hit something. It was probably the ground, but I hit it so hard that everything went black. All the noise stopped. I smelled nothing, I felt nothing. The world went far away. It was like when Tabitha threw me to the ground, only so much worse. However long it lasted was anyone's guess. When it stopped, I was laying on the ground looking straight up with my eyes burning. A haze of red smoke had descended over everything. Some of the trees along the side of the road were on fire. And I could not see Marki.

"Marki?" I croaked, my voice hardly worked.

I continued to shout for him, even though my throat wanted me to stop. I couldn't stand up, only crawl along the ground. When I got to my feet, I took one step and fell down. I coughed whenever I tried to breathe, and I remembered what I had never forgotten. The Talon Gun had blown up, self-destructed after overloading trying to take on too many targets at once. A sick man in a top hat with too much time on his hands had done it. He had spent his days hiding from people and reading top secret documents he found lying around. He tried to kill us, and then Tabitha Caulder killed him. And everything leading up to this point was worth it just because it caused the destruction of a horrible weapon. I closed my eyes, I was content.

"Hey, we got another one!" Someone yelled.

I opened my eyes with a start and my body jerked. There was a man in a gasmask standing over me. He was dragging me.

"Who…"

"Kyle Fencer, just stay calm. I'm trying to get you out of this shit storm."

Slowly the red haze started to go away the further we went. Soon I could see the dust covered skies and it no longer hurt to breathe. When the man in the gasmask stopped dragging me, I found myself lying next to Marki in the middle of the road who looked just as dazed as I felt.

"Hey, I found two Lazurians. Do I get some sort of promotion?" Fencer asked someone I couldn't see.

"Yeah, maybe in the future you can go on Kine's special missions. Those sound like a lot of fun."

"Shut up both of you, these two just survived a crash!"

There were so many voices I didn't recognize.

"Did you see that bike? End over end! It was like a god damn cartoon!"

"You mean before the giant dust cloud smothered us all?"

The world was starting to stop moving around me. I tried to sit up but someone held me down.

"Wait, Kalina." It was Jones. "Don't move. If you didn't hear, both you and Marki skipped across the road like stones."

"Screw that, they bounced! Boing!"

"Are these… are these the Rubes…"

"Yeah, Heckler's unit. They found me; I told them what you were trying to do. I don't think anyone is ever going to believe you. The bombers hit the Talon Gun close to when it exploded. Where's Dan?"

"Dead." I coughed. "He was shot."

"Good for him."

"You're never going to forgive him, are you?" I asked.

"Never."

Somehow I knew we had won. Without the Talon Gun, Tabitha wouldn't stand a chance against our air force. That weapon was the only thing keeping us from bombing them into nothing. And after what we did… we had set off the biggest bomb I had ever seen- The Talon Gun itself right in middle of everything.

"Not bad for the three of us…" I said.

"Not bad for you, you mean. You and Marki… you're crazy."

"Twenties."

I couldn't help but smile at Dan's stupid first impression.

- End of Story

-- Thanks for Reading!


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